Roses to Ashes, Ashes to Dust
by Astroskylark
Summary: The ninth Doctor meets his tenth self before the later regenerates, and receives a rose.


Roses to Ashes, Ashes to Dust

Characters: Ninth Doctor, Tenth Doctor, Eleventh Doctor, Rose Tyler

CHAPTER 1:

January 1, 2005. Cardiff.

The Doctor stood for a moment, surveying the scene in front of him. The snow drifted down slowly on the twin TARDIS's, both singing in his mind, a terribly lonely song of the death and destruction that forever followed (_plagued_) the last relics of Galifrey. One song was older, a song of loss all too fresh, of something found and something torn away, of people loved and that love's death, the other an angry song of fire and all the walls of ice built to put the flames out.

He decided to let himself into the older song, the one of love and loss that made him want to run, as far and as fast as he had after the Time War. Suddenly Earth didn't seem far enough from the ruins of Galifrey, and he wanted to take his own TARDIS and hide at the end of time itself, when the flames might finally, finally die with the death of the universe, and maybe be kind enough to take him with them. He forced himself to enter the foreign TARDIS, the little blue police box that was so much bigger on the inside, travelled in time and space _(but never far enough)_ and carried the Destroyer of Worlds, the killer of his own kind, around the universe to fix things and right wrongs _(like it worked)._

A brown haired man in a torn pinstripe suit stood a distance away from the control panel, clutching his glowing hand. The Doctor knew him immediately, and stood in awe for a moment before the other man looked up at him with strangely haunted eyes. Neither spoke for a while, relishing the feel of another Time Lord before cluttering the silence with words. The Doctor could tell that his future self was about to regenerate, and that the regeneration had been delayed almost impossibly long. He saw the agony in the other's eyes, but also a reluctance to leave while his a former incarnation stood before him.

The glowing Doctor spoke first. "It gets better," he said softly.

"You're alone," said the leather-clad Doctor.

"That's fairly new," he replied, an edge to his voice that betrayed more than he wanted to.

"And what number would you be?" the other asked.

"Ten."

The other Doctor knew that he didn't have to identify himself to the other Time Lord, as the other Doctor had already lived through his ninth life.

"I promise," Ten started, but was cut off by a ragged scream that escaped from his lips unbidden. Regenerations really weren't meant to be delayed his long. "It gets better," he managed to gasp out. This was his former self before he met Rose, right after the Time War. He cursed the rules of time that he couldn't say more. Instead of speaking, he moved over to his former self and embraced him deeply, letting out a small sob.

"I'll stay. For you." Nine offered.

"Please," the other Doctor responded. He reached behind the console, pulling out a single flower and handing it to his former self. The least he could do, before plastic people, the end of the world, zombies and Charles Dickens, aliens in London, World War III, Daleks, Slitheen, Bad Wolf and more Daleks.

"A rose?" Nine asked skeptically.

"A rose," the other Doctor smiled. "A rose for you," he repeated slowly.

He gave into the regeneration then, whispering, "I don't want to go" despite himself before rewriting his cells and his personality and surrendering himself to another man. The eleventh Doctor collapsed after managing, "Thank you."

\_/~~-/\++/\-~~\_/

Nine was gone when he woke up alone in a crashing TARDIS with a swimming pool in the library.

CHAPTER 2:

Plastic people, trying to take over the Earth. He would be there to save them, because he always came back to his pet planet _(lot of good it does, now that his home is gone). _He always came back _(like it meant anything_). But Earth could wait.

He went back to the ruins of Galifrey. It was still burning. He torn up the rose his future self had given him, and had watched as the ripped petals floated down to burn with his home. _Roses to ashes, ashes to dust, dust to rise up against and choke those who would set fire to the sky and live again to watch everything burn. Roses to ashes, ashes to dust. _

CHAPTER 3:

"So, I'm going to go upstairs and blow it up and I might well die in the process, but don't worry about me, no. You go on, go on, go and have your lovely beans on toast. And don't tell anyone about this, because you'll get them killed." A little human girl that kept asking questions that he'd rather not answer, and him, who would do anything to shut her up, anything at all.

"I'm the Doctor by the way. What's your name?" Something about this human child that seemed to draw him in, something cool and calm within him that promised to kill the flames with warmth, to melt the ice at the same time.

"Rose." It didn't hit him at first. Later, he'd never be able to forget.

"Nice to meet you, Rose. Now run for your life." It took him a fraction of a second too long to respond. A fraction of a second less, and he could have forgotten, could have moved on from the human child and her eyes swimming with the rivers of time. A fraction of a second more, and he wouldn't have been able to tear himself away from her then. _Rose_. It didn't hit him at first.

CHAPTER 4:

She'd followed him.

"Do you know like we were saying, about the Earth revolving? It's like when you're a kid, and the first time they tell you that the world is turning and you just can't quite believe it because everything looks like it's standing still. I can feel it." He'd realized in that moment. _Rose_. No turning back.

He'd left, but he knew that he was coming back. He'd always come back.

CHAPTER 5:

He wore the body that had given him the rose so many years ago, but he wasn't him, not yet.

"How long are you going to stay with me?" he asked Rose. His Rose.

"Forever." He remembered the burning rose and the fires of Galifrey with her word. The dying fires that would never be completely dead, the dying fires that had consumed a lonely flower from a foreign world. _Roses to ashes, ashes to dust._

CHAPTER 6:

"It gets better." _For a while._ The unspoken words he should have heard. That he never could have until now.

_The roads met in a scattered forest, arching out of sight following the uneven arc of the horizon, and for one small moment in time, two paths could be one on a world where time was ripped away with the turning of the planet and the ponderously slow revolution around a single tiny star, where seconds were torn away with the ticking of a billion clocks. It was in such a place, in a tiny scattered forest in the depths of frigid winter, that seconds could merge into hours and time could bleed into itself unheeded. It was in such a place that the trees lining the stone-studded path could oversee the two roads that became one, uncaring of the turning of the world or the agonizing transition between night and day, of the journey of the stars burning in foreign skies across the backdrop of the night and of the ceaseless, conquering force of time. _

_And it was in such a place that the two roads that had become one for the briefest of moments split apart, where the one road became two, and some of the beauty in the world was destroyed as the divergent paths tore away from each other in tune with the roaring tide of endless time. _

He'd lost Rose.


End file.
